Tom studied history at Cambridge University where he also spent a year as president of the students union. He has an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business which he attended on a Harkness Fellowship. He then spent five years as a management consultant with McKinsey before joining W H Smith as head of strategic planning, and then working as a merchandise director in its retail chain. He subsequently undertook research with the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre before establishing the Brackenbury Group (subsequently The Chambers) where he worked as a consultant to retailing, consumer goods, distribution, business services and media companies and with leading venture capital firms both as advisor and as leader of several MBI bids. He has served as a director of a number of private companies including chairing the board of Gamestation, a video games retailer, which he helped grow from 26 stores to 70 before negotiating its sale in 2002.
Tom has had appointments in the health sector for most of the past thirty years: deputy chairman of a large commissioning authority, as a professional regulator, executive director of a private-sector supplier of nursing services, chairman of a public-private partnership company, as trustee of a medical research charity, as chairman of West Middlesex University Hospital, and currently as chairman of West London NHS Trust which includes Broadmoor Hospital.
Outside his professional life, Tom’s experience of organisations and how they work includes national roles in two political parties and standing for parliament, skipper of a succession of offshore racing yachts and several appointments with sailing clubs and associations, singing in a large choir, and tending a couple of beehives on the roof of his home in west London. Tom writes about sailing at http://www.mostly-harmless.co.uk/.